Design Heads : creating tomorrow

Exhibition : Friday, January 31 to Sunday, February 2, 2025
Opening : Thursday, January 30, 2025, featuring a talk by Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn.

Campus HEAD
Bât.H, Le Cube
Av. de Châtelaine 7,
1203 Genève

At the same time, on the HEAD - Geneva campus, the exhibition Design Heads: tomorrow's creations, organised in partnership with Art Genève, showcases young design talent. In the Cube, some thirty award-winning or selected projects offer a rich and diverse vision of contemporary design practices.

From graphic design and interior architecture to fashion and interactive experiences, young designers are exploring universal themes - such as identity, nature and love - and confronting current issues such as sustainability, inclusivity and misinformation. These projects bear witness to the commitment of a new generation that is questioning and reinventing uses and forms.
Curator: Joanna Haefeli

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HEAD TALKS : PROGRAMME OF LUNCHTIME LECTURES
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  • THURSDAY 30 JANUARY 2025,12:00 - 14:00 (in partnership with the Pavillon Sicli Foundation)
    12:00 - 14:00: Opening with a talk by the artist Thomas Hirschhorn, followed by a tour in the presence of the designers.

    Thomas Hirschhorn has created over seventy works in the public space, questioning the notions of autonomy, authorship and resistance of a work of art. Composed of materials such as tape, cardboard, wood and bin bags, his inherently precarious works serve as places to meet and exchange thoughts. His work has been exhibited in numerous museums and public and private collections around the world. He has won the Meret Oppenheim Prize (2018), the Joseph Beuys Prize (2004) and the Marcel Duchamp Prize (2000).
     
  • FRIDAY 31 JANUARY 2025, 12:00 - 13:00
    Gun & Roses, lecture by Alexandra Midal, historian and theorist of design.

    Gun & Roses invites you to explore the hidden power of the language of flowers, traditionally associated with the delicacy of women. At the intersection of visual arts, design, and politics, floral cryptology provides a twist that deconstructs a worn-out metaphor, questions the notion of secrecy in troubled times like ours, and challenges the role of storytelling in exhibition design. Between appearances and mystification, the floral metaphor reveals that mastering the manipulation of forms can be a weapon against oppression

    Alexandra Midal is an ordinary professor at HEAD - Geneva, an art and design historian who combines practice-based research with theory as an artist-curator and film essayist. She has been Dan Graham's assistant, director of the FRAC Haute-Normandie and director of the Design Project Room (DPR, HEAD-Geneva). She is the author of numerous books, including The Murder Factory; Design by Accident, as well as catalogues and essays, including Do You Speak Flower?; Top Secret: cinéma & espionage; Girls, Aesthetization of Politics and Manipulation of Entertainment; Politique-Fiction; Tomorrow Now; and others. She has organised a number of international exhibitions on visual culture and politics: Double Agent; Bio28 Biennale Ljubljana (2024-2025); Top Secret, Cinémathèque Française, Paris and La Caixa, Madrid, Barcelona, Zaragoza, Valencia, (2021-2024); Popcorn - Art, Design and Cinema, MAMC, Saint-Etienne (2017); Eames & Hollywood, ADAM, Brussels (2016) ; Politique-Fiction, Cité du design, Saint-Etienne (2012) , Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, Wolfsonian FIU, Miami (2012) ; Marguerite Humeau, The Things, DPR, HEAD-Genève ; Tomorrow Now : When Design Meets Science Fiction, MUDAM, Luxembourg (2007) ; Rodney Graham, Camera Obscura Mobile ; Appartement témoin ; Les Contes de fées se terminent bien.
     
  • SATURDAY 1 FEBRUARY 2025, 12:00 - 13:00
    Lecture by Ben Hibon

    Ben Hibon is a Swiss director specialising in animation. Born in Geneva, he studied fine art before moving to London in 1996 to train in graphic design at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, where he also obtained a master's degree. Hibon created animated sequences for Capcom's Killer7 video game in 2005 and directed a segment for Sakichi Sato's Japanese film Tokyo Zombie. In 2006, his short film Codehunters was presented at the MTV Asia Awards and won several awards, including the Golden Nica at the Prix Ars Electronica. He also collaborated with Sony PlayStation to make an animated series based on the game Heavenly Sword and contributed to the making of the animated short The Tale of The Three Brothers in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1. In 2020, he was announced as director and executive producer of the Star Trek: Prodigy series for Nickelodeon. His work, recognised at numerous festivals and prestigious awards, includes collaborations with brands such as Sony, MTV, Sega, Capcom and Puma.

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SCHEDULE AND INFORMATION

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Thursday 30 January: 12 noon to 7 pm
Friday 31 January: 12 noon to 8pm
Sunday 2 February 2025: 12 noon to 7pm - Children's workshop (2pm to 6pm)
 

Program

Thomas Hirschhorn
30.01.25, 12:00 to 14:00

Opening with a talk by the artist Thomas Hirschhorn, followed by a tour in the presence of the designers.

Alexandra Midal - Gun & Roses
31.01.25, 12:00 to 13:00
Ben Hibon
01.02.25, 12:00 to 13:00
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Speakers

Thomas Hirschhorn
Swiss artist
website
Instagram
Alexandra Midal
Historian and theorist of design.
Website
Ben Hibon
Swiss director specialising in animation
Instagram

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